Left Voice

MARCH TOGETHER THIS MAY 1ST

April 29, 2009

This May 1st workers and leftist organizations, together, will march to the Plaza de Mayo in an act that declaring that the capitalist pay for the crisis as well as confront the national scene of the dominating class and their political parties who are having the lead over us.

The UIA industries have proposed the devaluation of the Argentine peso to pay wages as well as implement, with the Ministry of Laborâ€™s support, layoffs, suspensions and freezing of yearly wage negotiations, without any resistance from the CGT and CTA unions in defense of employment and wages. The multinational auto industry, who the government subsidizes and with whom SMATA (auto workers union) negotiates, withdraw their man in the Secretary of Industry, FraguÃ­o from FIAT-IVECO, and are pressuring for more imports from the central countries; without concern of closing more auto part plants, which have been hiy the hardest by the crisis and has accounted for the most layoffs. The agricultural industry owners from the Mesa de Enlace (committee of the Agricultural (landowners) bodies) demand a reduction in export taxes and after using the lock out and the blockade (shortage) of food , are now presenting candidates on the â€œdissident Peronistâ€ list lead by De NarvÃ¡ez â€“ who is a businessman and former Agricultural Minister under the Menem government â€“ and Sola. They are also presenting candidates on the UCR and CoaliciÃ³n CÃ­vica lists. The agricultural bosses are doing politics, using the excuse of â€œrebulding partiesâ€ in order to get a political influence in the next government. CarriÃ³ has transformed â€“ through the aid of Prat Gay, JPMorgan bankâ€™s ex-spokesman- into a return profit for the neoliberal politicians. Following the â€œmeat for 80 pesosâ€ line, created by big agribusiness countryside leader, De Angeli, to show how much the price of meat would rise if the taxes werenâ€™t reduced. CarriÃ³ not only proposed â€œzero taxes for the agricultural industry,â€ she also proposed getting rid of all the taxes imposed on the business class, which is something that only the Bush republicans and the Obama rightwing would dare to propose.

Not with the government or the opposing bosses: The capitalists pay for the crisis

The government wants to represent the elections as a dispute between â€œtwo modelsâ€ : â€œthe residual neoliberal alliance and the pro-industrialists, for work, production and social inclusionâ€ , as Kirchner stated in an act along with Scioli (governor of Buenos Aires province). To finish it off, Cristina, with complete hypocrisy, declared that â€œthe workers donâ€™t have to pay for the crisis.â€ In that same moment, one of these â€œindustrialists,â€ the owner of the Massuh paper factory (who was head of the UIA), had revealed that he was on the brink of bankruptcy, while the workers in the Quilmes and San Luis plants resisted in order to maintain their jobs.

Despite six years of growth the laid off workers, like in 2002, receive $150 a month for their â€œsocial inclusionâ€ , while they pay the IMF and World Bank around 25 billion dollars. Furthermore, despite the payments Argentinaâ€™s foreign debt is around $150 billion dollars. Kirchner wants to dig out the â€œantineoliberalâ€ rhetoric precisely when the government that once said good-bye to the IMF, returns to the negotiating table. The government and the IMF argued over negotiations to provide Argentina with more credit access, after a reinforcement of funds during the G20 summit. The plan to increase credit access was implemented with the â€œintentionâ€ of helping semi-colonial countries on the condition that the IMF will, once again, control these countries economic decisions.
The government and the IMF argued over negotiations to provide Argentina with more credit access

Beyond the â€œnational and popularâ€ rhetoric the foreign petroleum, mining and fishing companies were the governmentâ€™s strategic allies. The 7 big cereal export companies like Cargill or Dreyfuss werenâ€™t affected nor were their concentrations of land modified: 4,000 big rural, capitalist, property owners own 84 million hectors, half of which is used for agriculture and cattle raising. The rural farm workers, far from being like the â€œagricultural labour statuteâ€ under the first Peronist government [a law that regulated the agricultural workers labour conditions], are among the most exploited workers in the country and the majority work under the labor laws that date back to the Videla and Marinez Hoz dictatorships. The millions of new jobs created in the last few years, were precarious jobs: more than 40% of the working class works under the table with wages that are four times less than the official family shopping basket (used to calculate the retail price index): $4,300 pesos a month. The ministry of Labor approves this â€œwork modelâ€ , which allows the bosses to lay off thousands working these precarious jobs as well as carry out massive worker suspensions with wage reductions, while putting off negotiations.

Millions of workers support the government â€“ and they are favored to win in the next elections â€“ with the expectations that they will have better living conditions thanks to the capitalist growth, is based in past conditions. Pushing forward the elections and the â€œtestimonialsâ€ list maneuver in the providence of Buenos Aires are resources used by a government in decline and that, in the case that they lose the elections a political crisis would be unleased. One way or another, after June 28th the workers will clash with a government that will make more concession with the company powers and be harder on the working and mass sectors.

Thatâ€™s why the principle slogan of this united act of workers and leftist organizations has a future: that the capitalists pay for the crisis. Prohibit layoffs and suspensions with wage reduction; for a redistribution of working hours among all the workers without lowering wages and the reopening of wage negotiations; a public works plan for housing, schools and hospitals, providing work for all the free hands; at the expense of the accumulated business classâ€™ earnings; we have to start to gain support in the workplace, in the unions and in the working class neighborhoods.

A working class policy

Hugo Moyano from the CGT union recently demonstrates the pro-government stance by â€œbacking the governmentâ€™s measures to maintain productivity and jobs.â€ The rally that the CGT is preparing for April 30th, which is a somewhat hidden act of government support, is an abandonment of wage demands and the project to limit the bosses from laying-off workers as they please. They, therefore, only end up demanding â€œan increase in the family allowance and subsides for the unemployed.â€

The national meeting called by the CTA union on April 22nd had limitations imposed by its own leadership. They did not unite to strike, even once, with the ATE, CTERA and other central unions that showed the force of the important sector of the working class through strikes, nor did they unite in any of the main acts in Plaza de Mayo. In the end the limitations of the meeting is tightly linked to the fact that the CTA leadership shies away from the independent working class interventions and, consequently, shows support for the center-left like Pino Solanas or Sabatella. The leaders of the CTA erase the steps of those who, like Solanas and Lozanoâ€™s Project Sur, align with the argibuisness owners in the conflict between the agro business and the government, and at the same time leave an open escape for the group those who run from the pro-government, like Libres del Sur, who today is aligned with the MorÃ³n mayor.

Within the CTA union we have been proposing to stand against these variants and to open a wide and democratic discussion about the necessity to build a working class party, based in the forces of the organizations of struggle and with the plan that the capitalists pay for the crisis.

The PTS proposes to the rest of those calling out to march on May 1st to give continuity to this unitary action, to march with the campaign for all of the unions to demand a national strike and initiate plans to combat the CGT and CTA unions in defense of employment and salaries; which means the union organizations breaking with the governmentâ€™s subordination policy, that are implemented by the CGT and part of the CTA union. Thatâ€™s why this May 1st should be a platform of the principle representatives of these struggles of resistance and union reorganization that is forming throughout the country; as an attempt to unify the combative working classes tactics, the Subwayâ€™s steward committee, the Massuh paper workers, the IVECO auto industry laborers in CÃ³rdoba province, and others.

The PTS has been debating a unified agreement in the upcoming elections with the comrades of the Socialist Left and MAS in order to form an alliance of the left, workers, anti-capitalists and socialists with political independence from the government as well as itâ€™s opposition, the Mesa de Enlace in its variants of dissident Peronists (Peronism) or Pan-Radical. Unfortunately the Partido Obrero (Workersâ€™ Party), who had been calling for â€œan anti-capitalist coalitionâ€ , have refused any kind of possible alliance, putting as a condition to head (to be at the top of) all main candidatures. This position, that expresses a â€œtestimonialâ€ anticapitalism, was rejected by the representatives of PTS, IS (Izquierda Socialista) and MAS.

For these tasks we call out to all our readers to march with us, the PTS, on May 1st, to fortify our political base of workers and student revolutionaries, who intervene in the major unions and the central unions, in the internal commissions and body of delegates, to fight for common alliance in the struggle: for the capitalists to pay for the crisis and for the construction of a working class party towards conquering government control.

They are the dangerous ones

We march on May 1st with the platform against the deceitful campaign that blames â€œinsecurityâ€ on the â€œdangerous minorsâ€ , who live in poor neighborhoods, which in the style of the old political regimen is pushing to lower the age for being subject to criminal liability to 14. A political maneuver that has no foundation: If only a tenth of the 500 thousand youth, who donâ€™t work or study-because they donâ€™t even have the right to be exploited by the capitalist regimen- went out to kill someone even if just one time, it would produce 500 thousand crimes, not the handful of cases that stain the media.

This governmentâ€™s turn to the right is evident and clearly demonstrated in comparing Kirchner from the first years of â€œthe human rightsâ€ to what we previously mentioned â€œthe lay should permit a dangerous minor to be convicted.â€ Itâ€™s not coincidental that they propose the ex-Manumits, Scioli, as â€œthe best candidateâ€ to succeed.

At first Kirchner pointed out that the danger was in the acts of genocide, like in the Buenos Aires police trained by Camps and Etchecolatz and now they say that â€œthe dangerâ€ is in the hands of the children laborers of these police, who use the youth to run a car theft business. While the mafia of the major crimes react with more impunity in the working class neighborhoods putting more police in the streets and thousands of Buenos Aires exonerated police returning to the force to protect us from â€œthe insecurityâ€ . Thus, reinforce the Stateâ€™s social control over the poorest sectors of the unemployed population. Now, they have the â€œrightâ€ to go to prison and continue to populate the prison system. This is the future that the capitalist Argentina has to offer.